She vaulted up into the driver’s seat, dumped her backpack and the leather bag onto the passenger’s seat, fired up the engine and drove down the long, narrow driveway to the main road.
When she was well clear of the house, she stopped long enough to toss the pistol into the lake. There was no point leaving the gun around, because it was evidence that might lead to questions about her presence in the house. Worst-case scenario was that Keegan would go to the cops and accuse her of being an intruder, although that was unlikely. Collectors avoided the authorities for the same reason others in the artifacts trade did: no one wanted that kind of attention. But you never knew for sure how an irate collector would react. They were all unpredictable.
Once the gun had vanished into the lake, she uncovered the SUV’s license plates and got back on the road.
Satisfied that she did not have a tail, she motored sedately across the 520 Bridge, heading toward the bright lights of downtown Seattle. It was after midnight and there was very little traffic. Seattle was a boomtown these days thanks to the tech industry, but it was still a relatively quiet place in the wee hours of the morning. That worked out well for her because a lot of her business was conducted during those hours.
She drove straight to an alley in Pioneer Square, the old, historic section of the city. The narrow lane between two brick buildings was lit only by a weak yellow bulb over an unmarked door. It was the sort of location sensible people intuitively avoided, especially at night.
She parked directly in front of the unmarked door. A burly figure dressed in a dark jacket and a knit cap detached itself from the shadows of the vestibule and ambled around to the driver’s side of the car. He opened the door.
“Valet parking, Ms. Raines?” he asked in a voice that had been dug out of a rock quarry.
“No thanks, Brick. I won’t be here long tonight.” Sierra grabbed her pack and the leather bag and jumped down to the pavement. “I just need to drop off a return and then I’m going home to get some sleep. It’s been a long night.”
She handed over her keys and a few bucks.
“No problem,” Brick said. “The car can sit right here until you get back.” He glanced at the black bag. “A return, huh? Mr. Jones won’t be happy.”
“Neither am I.”
She followed Brick up the three steps to the entrance. The door was clad in wood and covered in peeling paint. Looking at it, you would never know that under the veneer was a solid steel plate. Of course, looking at Brick, you wouldn’t know he was wearing a holstered gun under his jacket.
Okay, maybe you would have a hunch about the gun.
“How did the date with Deandra go?” she asked as she watched Brick open the door.
Brick lit up like an LED sign. “It went great. Did the old-fashioned thing like you suggested. Dinner and a show, and afterward we went somewhere and talked about the movie. Deandra knows a lot about films. Got another date lined up this weekend after we get off work here at the Vault.”
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad things went well.”
“Thanks to you pushing me to ask her out,” Brick said. “It took all the nerve I had. When she said yes, I could hardly believe it.”
“I had a hunch the two of you would get along together. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Brick ushered her into the shadowed hall. The two men running the security scanner were lounging in a couple of folding chairs. One was middle-aged and bald. The other was much younger and on the twitchy side. They got to their feet and grinned in welcome.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said.
“Why do I have the feeling the delivery didn’t go well?” the bald guard asked.
“You must be psychic, Clyde,” Sierra said.
“Do you know how many times a night I have to listen to that joke?” Clyde snorted. Energy shifted in the atmosphere around him. He was a very high-level intuitive talent. It made him an ideal security guard. His brows rose when he saw the leather bag. “Well, well, well. Looks like the buyer is returning the purchase.”
“Unsatisfied customer?” Twitch asked with a knowing look.
“More like an unsatisfied go-between,” Sierra said. She put the leather bag and her backpack on the scanner belt. Next she stripped off her leather jacket, sat down on a handy stool and pulled off her leather boots.
Most go-betweens wore a lot of leather. It had become the unofficial uniform of the profession, but it wasn’t a fashion statement. Go-betweens wore leather for the same reason bikers did—protection. When you worked in a business that involved a lot of paranormal artifacts, you had to be prepared for the occasional supercharged surprise. Brushing up against the most innocent-looking relic could send a staggering shock across the senses. Leather muted the jolt.
She added the jacket and the boots to the other items on the belt and then she walked through the metal detector. “Among other things, the funds were never transferred to my account here at the Vault. I didn’t get paid.”
“If you didn’t get paid, then Mr. Jones doesn’t get his commission,” Clyde said. “The boss is not going to be happy.”
“He is not the only unhappy individual involved in this business tonight,” Sierra said.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Jones will eighty-six the deadbeat,” Twitch said.
“I certainly hope so.” Sierra collected the leather bag, her pack, her jacket and her boots from the other end of the scanner. “I will take some satisfaction from knowing Keegan won’t be doing any more business through the Vault. One thing Mr. Jones won’t tolerate is a customer who doesn’t pay his bills. Also, the creep pulled a gun on me.”
Clyde whistled softly. “That settles it, then. Mr. Jones really doesn’t like it when a client threatens an agent.”
“When word gets around that Jones kicked him out of the Vault, Keegan won’t be able to get any of the reliable go-between agencies to work with him,” Twitch said.
Clyde grunted. “Serves him right.”
Doing business in the underground trade of hot artifacts entailed a lot of risks for all parties involved. Obsessive collectors, con artists, fraudulent dealers, ruthless freelancers and raiders were all part of the dangerous ecosystem—to say nothing of the occasional psychic monster. To normal people who did not believe in the paranormal, such creatures were the stuff of legends and nightmares, but when you worked in the underworld, you took them seriously.
All of which explained the success of Ambrose Jones and his thriving delivery business. Go-betweens who worked for the Vault received several important benefits. Jones acted as a broker between buyers and sellers. He secured the hot relics in his own private vault until they were delivered. He arranged for the safe transfer of the very large sums of money involved in the deals. And if things went wrong, as they had tonight, he would punish the offender. In return for those perks, he took a hefty commission.
Worth every penny, Sierra thought.
A door opened midway down the hall. The rock music got a little louder but it was still muffled. Jones walked out of his office. Sierra noticed that the lights inside the office had been turned down low. She smiled. Mr. Jones was entertaining a lady friend this evening. She was pretty sure she knew the identity of the woman.
Jones had opened the Vault a couple of years ago. No one seemed to know much about him. He was somewhere in his early forties. His dark hair was turning silver at the temples but he kept himself in excellent condition. He looked very good in the sleek, tailored trousers, black turtleneck and slouchy black linen jacket that seemed to be his uniform. He had the face and the profile to go with the buff body—strong, and even handsome, if you liked the cold-eyed, gunfighter type.
Sierra found him intriguing, but that was as far as it went. He would probably make an interesting date but her intuition told her there would be no future with him. And since Jones never dated his
own agents, even the possibility of an interesting date was out of the question.
Generally speaking, she was about ready to give up on dating altogether. It had become a depressing business. She longed to meet someone with whom a future at least looked possible, just as she wanted a career that centered her and gave her a sense of satisfaction. She was good at authenticating and transporting hot artifacts but it didn’t feel like something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Jones looked at her. “What went wrong?”
“Keegan tried to kill me,” Sierra said.
“Obviously he didn’t succeed. Congratulations on that, by the way. I wonder what made him think he could get away with murdering a Vault agent?”
“He’s a collector.” Sierra shrugged. “They’re not known for being an especially stable bunch. He’s got just enough talent to think he’s the smartest man in the room.”
“I will terminate his membership in the club immediately.” Jones examined her with a critical eye. “You look like you need a drink. On the house tonight.”
“Thanks, I do need a drink, but I’d rather go home and have one there.”
“I understand.” Jones picked up the black bag. “I’ll find another buyer for the artifact.”
He went back into his office. Just before the door closed, Sierra heard a sultry, feminine voice. She smiled, recognizing it. Molly Rosser was a high-end artifacts dealer.
“Something go wrong with a delivery?” Molly asked.
“One of my best agents was nearly murdered tonight,” Jones said. “As a result I have a few things to take care of. I’m afraid I’m going to have to say good night.”
“I understand,” Molly said.
Molly was an excellent match for Jones, Sierra thought. She handled his unusual business, his powerful talent and his dangerous edge with cool ease. But then, she was a strong talent herself.
The door to Jones’s private quarters closed.
Clyde leaned toward Sierra and spoke in low tones. “Between you and me and Twitch, here, I think our Mr. Jones has got it bad for Ms. Rosser.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sierra said. She pulled on her boots and jacket. “They’re perfect for each other.”
“Nice of you to introduce them,” Twitch said. He grinned. “The boss has been in a pretty good mood lately.”
CHAPTER 2
Ashort time later Sierra drove into the underground garage of one of the gleaming apartment towers in the South Lake Union neighborhood. She shut down the SUV’s big engine and sat quietly for a moment, checking the side mirrors and the extra-wide rearview mirror for indications she might not be alone. There were no auras reflected in the glass.
Satisfied, she collected her pack, got out of the car and headed for the elevator lobby at a brisk pace. The fact that she could not detect any auras in the car mirrors was no guarantee there was no one hiding in the emergency stairwell or around the corner of a concrete wall. The mirror locket worked reasonably well in a one-on-one situation at close quarters, but it had some serious limitations.
She used her key fob to access the elevators, but she did not allow herself to relax until she reached the twelfth floor and was safely inside her small one-bedroom apartment.
Cozy was the term the leasing agent had used to describe the small space. Sierra had stuck with the term because it sounded more upbeat than cramped. It would have made more financial sense to go with one of the tiny studios but she knew she would not have been able to handle the claustrophobia. She had grown up on a rural island in the San Juans surrounded by a heavily wooded forest and a rugged landscape. City living had required some major adjustments.
She had worked as a Vault agent for less than four months. She was still struggling to recover from the financial hit that had struck when she had lost the job at Ecclestone’s Auction House in Portland. In the meantime she told herself she was okay with the small apartment. It wasn’t as if she spent a lot of time in it. Like the other agents who worked for Ambrose Jones, her “office” was a booth in the underground level of the Vault nightclub.
Out of habit, she made her way through the apartment, locket in hand, checking to make sure she truly was alone. Mirrors glittered on every wall. She thought they made the place look bigger. Also, she liked mirrors.
Satisfied there were no zombies hiding under the bed and no psychic monsters in the closets, she changed into pajamas and slippers and padded into the kitchen to pour herself a large, medicinal glass of wine. It had been a very long night—also a very unprofitable night.
She sat down at the dining counter and picked up her phone. She had deliberately left it behind when she set out to deliver the artifact. Vault protocol dictated that agents carry minimal tech when operational. It was a precaution that made it more difficult to be tracked.
She hesitated before turning on the phone. Adrenaline mingled with exhaustion was still charging her senses. She should probably wait until morning to check her messages. But Mr. Jones might have decided to throw another job her way to make up for the Keegan fiasco. If she didn’t jump on the opportunity, he would offer the delivery to another agent.
She swallowed some of the wine, took a deep breath and turned on the phone. There were not a lot of messages. That was directly attributable to the fact that she did not have a lot of friends at the moment. Her former colleagues at Ecclestone’s had ghosted her in the wake of the scandal that had shaken the exclusive auction house to its foundations.
Someone had to take the fall for the fraudulent art and antiques that had been evaluated and authenticated by the experts in the house. The clients who had been scammed wanted blood. The firm’s reputation had been on the line. When rumors surfaced that the con artist was the new associate in the American Antiques Department, the CEO had leaped on the opportunity to throw Sierra under the bus. Julian Mather, the man she had been dating, was the first to disappear. The colleagues she had considered friends had vanished shortly thereafter.
Sierra told herself she understood. No one with a viable career in the world of fine arts and antiques could afford to maintain a relationship with someone who was rumored to deal in frauds and fakes. Reputation was everything. So, sure, she understood. Nevertheless, it hurt.
It didn’t help that losing the job had proven her parents right. Again. She was not cut out to live in the normal world, a world where those who claimed to have psychic talents were viewed with deep suspicion or, equally unsettling, a scary fascination. She had done her best to conceal her abilities during her tenure at Ecclestone’s, but the need to hide that part of herself was stressful, and it was a huge barrier when it came to establishing personal relationships. One of the quickest ways to lose a date, it turned out, was to tell him you could make him faint by using your psychic powers on him. A lot of people in the so-called normal world were not exactly open-minded when it came to the paranormal.
There was another issue that had made passing for normal difficult. She had been raised in what sociologists called an intentional community. Quest had been founded by an eclectic group of artists, misfits, neohippies, psychics—fake and real—and others seeking an alternate path. The thing about growing up in Quest was that none of her friends and neighbors had a problem with the concept of the paranormal.
That was because a number of residents, including her parents and grandparents, had come from Fogg Lake, the rural town deep in the mountains of Washington State that had the unique distinction of being a community in which psychic phenomena were accepted as normal. There was a reason for that attitude—in Fogg Lake, the paranormal was normal.
Decades earlier, in the latter half of the twentieth century, Fogg Lake had been the unwitting subject of a government experiment gone very wrong. An explosion in a secret laboratory concealed in the nearby caves had shrouded the entire area in a strange fog laced with unknown paranormal radiation. The locals had slept for a c
ouple of days, and when they woke up they discovered that things were different—they were different. The ability to see auras was suddenly commonplace in Fogg Lake. Many people began to experience visions. Others heard strange voices or perceived colors that had no names.
The range of paranormal talents varied widely, and it wasn’t long before it became apparent that the changes had gone all the way down to the DNA level. The result was that Sierra and the other descendants of those who had been living in Fogg Lake at the time of what came to be known as the Incident were also endowed with paranormal abilities.
The first message on the phone was from her grandmother, reminding her that her grandfather’s birthday was coming up in three weeks during the Moontide celebration. Sierra dutifully responded that she was looking forward to the event and reminded herself that she had yet to find the right gift. She needed to focus on the problem. It wasn’t easy coming up with the ideal birthday present for a man who prided himself on a life of reflection, meditation and the study of philosophy. She would probably end up taking her usual gift—a bottle of good wine.
The second message was from Gwendolyn Swan, the proprietor of Swan Antiques in Pioneer Square. Interested in hiring you to authenticate an artifact rumored to be of unusual provenance . . .
In the underground market, unusual provenance was code for an object that was believed to have a paranormal vibe. Swan’s shop specialized in such artifacts. When Sierra had first entered the competitive go-between business, Gwendolyn Swan had helped her establish her reputation as a true talent by asking her opinion on a couple of relics. Sierra had identified one as a fraud and the other as an item that had probably come from a Bluestone Project lab. Swan, a strong talent herself, had been pleased. That, in turn, had convinced Ambrose Jones to give Sierra a chance.
All the Colors of Night Page 2
